Black Dog
by Karasu Yurei
Summary: Chap 2. John Winchester vs. Puppy. Round 2. In the right corner: John Winchester. In the left: Sam winchester. Ref: Dean Winchester who wishes he weren't related to either of these people. Not part of Angents of Fortune.
1. Chapter 1

Sam stood on high alert for another moment, sword raised in a two-handed grip, one side of his face, neck, one shoulder and arm a bit blood spattered. He let go of the sword with one hand and let the flat of the blade rest against his shoulder, then used his sleeve to wipe blood off his face as Dean came out of the wooded area with the shotgun hanging from one hand at his side.

"You good?" Dean asked, clearly doing a visual inspection to make sure none of the blood was Sam's. Beheading black dogs as they came leaping for you wasn't an easy feat. Especially when they were being flushed out from behind by a shotgun. Dean never would have tried it from Sam's end. He could handle a knife like a pro and a machete with efficiency, but sword work? He left that to his little brother, who seemed to have a love affair with bladed weapons.

"Yeah, I'm fine. If a little gross. Why is monster blood always somehow extra sticky?" He looked down at his flannel shirt and was damned glad he had chosen that as an outer layer, because it was ruined. He started to wipe the sword on his sleeve when they both heard a rustle in the underbrush.

Sam didn't have to look to know that the shotgun had come back up. He shifted right, so Dean could point the gun at the noise and he wouldn't be in the line of fire. Though who he was kidding, he didn't know. The only way to get out of the scatter pattern of a shotgun was to get behind cover. Good damned thing it was only loaded with rock salt.

He used the tip of the sword to nudge the brush away to find a shallow hollow. Inside was a smaller version of what had just bled all over his shirt. "Huh." Okay, so maybe this version was portable sized and a little fluffier.

"Huh, what." Dean took Sam's calm demeanor as a signal to flip the safety back onto the shotgun.

Sam looked down at the snarling little thing. It hardly looked threatening. His shoe was bigger. "It's a baby man-eating monster." Honestly, he was a little confused. No one had ever gone into where these beasties came from. Apparently, they were capable of breeding. That was sort of alarming.

Dean peered down at it, watching as it tried to curl its lip up farther. "Well, get rid of it before it's actually big enough to hurt someone." He curled his lip up right back at it. Sam wasn't sure which one of the two of them looked more absurd, Dean sneering at something that would lose against his boot, or the hellbeast that looked like it had been put in the dryer.

He almost felt guilty putting an end to it. It was . . . hand sized. They had most likely just killed its mother. Still, Dean was right. Better now than later, when someone would get hurt. He hefted the sword, intent on at least making it quick, and the little thing lost all its bravado and cowered. Tail and nose to the ground, it belly-shuffled back.

Sam steeled himself and drew the sword back. It whimpered. He sighed and let the weapon fall to his side. The pitiful noise stopped, though it didn't stop cowering. "Jesus, Dean, it understands." He took a closer look at it. Soft black puppy fur, wide frightened puppy eyes. Okay, there was something unearthly in the back of them, but still, Sam knew fear when he saw it. Pointed ears, one of them flopping over partway. He thought they might be red instead of black, and that pinged something in the back of his mind, but he decided to look it up later. This image was finished off by big clumsy puppy paws. It was likely that the little guy couldn't even get out of his own way. Sam sympathized. He remembered when he had had a growth spurt and couldn't remember where his own elbows were. "You want it dead, you do it."

"Dude, you are such a girl. It doesn't understand a thing. It's just a pint-sized monster." Dean was looking at it critically. It was just a stupid Black dog. They didn't understand shit but killing. "Gimme the damned sword." Sam passed it over, trading sword for shotgun, and when Dean raised it, the stupid mutt whimpered again. He grit his teeth and started to swing, and it cried. The puppy actually cried. Like he had just kicked it.

The sword fell to Dean's side, its tip sinking into the ground a little in a way that made Sam cringe. "Crap." Dean looked at it again, even though he didn't want to. Its tail swept across the ground in the saddest wag he had ever seen. "Sam, I hate you."

"How is this my fault?" Sam asked, his indignation clear.

"I'm working on it. Give me time." Dean knew defeat when it stared him in the face. He wiped the blood off the sword onto Sam's shirt without his permission, just to be an ass. Then he took both weapons to the Impala's trunk. After stowing them, he grabbed a bottle of lighter fluid and one of Sam's sweatshirts.

When he got back, Sam and the puppy, yes, it was a puppy, were just staring at each other. "Dude, ditch the shirt."

"What.?" Sam blinked confusedly at him.

"Your shirt? The one covered in blood? I'll just torch it with the body." Sam nodded, slipped his outer layer off, and handed it to Dean. Dean in return tossed the sweatshirt at him. "Go get the fuzzball." He turned, refusing to look at Sam. "It bites you, you're on your own. It pees in my car, and I kill you both."

He always had been a sucker for puppy eyes.


	2. Angry Puppy

Angry Puppy Angry Puppy

Sam lying on the bed farthest from the door when he heard the sound of the lock being jimmied. Honestly, he wasn't really concerned. For one thing, he had a .45 under his pillow. Secondly, this wouldn't be the first time one of them had forgotten the room key and just fiddled their way in rather than knocking. If nothing else, it was good practice.

He looked over from were he lay, slightly propped up on a pillow or two. His laptop sat on his chest, and he was surfing for a new gig. It felt good to stretch out after being in the car for five hours had allowed that pulled muscle in his side to knot up. It didn't hurt at all that the puppy was acting like a heating pad pressed against him. The little guy was lying half on Sam's belly, dozing. Every now and then, Sam would reach around the computer and rub his red ears.

The puppy had more than doubled in size in the couple of months that they'd had him. Neither Sam not Dean had really been surprised. His evil bitch of a mother had been a monster in size. The little guy seemed to have inherited all of her size but none of her bad attitude. Which was what really made Sam look over from his laptop. The puppy had stood as the door opened and his lip curled up. He was getting ready to turn loose one of those little snarls of his. Someday Sam knew they'd sound like an angry chainsaw, but right now the angry sound the little guy made was more funny than anything else. Kind of like a squeak toy with fangs.

But the puppy wouldn't be getting ready to snarl at Dean, and it wasn't Dean who slipped through the door.

"Dad?"

"Sam?" John closed the door. "I didn't expect you to be here with the Impala . . ." And that was about when John noticed the baby monster half standing on his son's vulnerable midsection, lip curled back from wickedly pointed fangs, both blood red ears up and at attention, gold eyes tracking John with hostility that was being returned full force. "Sammy . . ."

Sam made an exasperated noise, and the puppy let loose a snarl. It sounded almost comical, but John wasn't laughing. In fact, he had retrieved a shotgun from the weapons bag.

"Sam, on the count of three, I want you to roll towards me."

That was about when the puppy tried to hide behind Sam's slim frame. "Fat lot of good you are," Sam said with a sigh, sat up, and rubbed the dog's ears.


	3. Beware of Dog

The room was not how he had left it. Dean thought there may be a Boy Scout rule about leaving a place better than when you got there. Maybe it was a Girl Scout rule. He didn't particularly want to know why there might be a part of his brain occupied with knowing Boy or Girl Scout rules, especially Girl Scout. Either way, the room sure as shit wasn't better than how he had left it.

Unless John Winchester improved everything. But John never seemed to improve Sammy's mood, which sometimes was unstable at best. This didn't mean Dean wasn't pleased to see the man, because he was. It was just that the situation looked a little grim.

He had left with the puppy snoozing on Sam, and Sam getting ready to follow suit while sprawled on the bed. Now John was giving Sam that flat-eyed look of angry disapproval and Sam was staring at a spot on the wall just beyond their father's left shoulder, jaw clenched like he was holding his temper in. That was never good with Sam. The more he held himself in check, the colder and angrier he became. Bad. All sorts of bad.

The puppy? Well, he had picked up on Sam's displeasure, and its little lip was curled back from admittedly sharp little fangs. Time to disarm the puppy, but that meant disarming Sam.

"Hi, Dad. I didn't get enough food for you. You want Sam's?"

"Hey!" Sam squawked, breaking off his glaring contest with the wall, whose greatest sin was being situated behind their father. Okay, so that horrid striped wallpaper wasn't helping its case any. Anyway, Dean won, Dad broke even, and the wall got to live to look hideous for one more day. All Dean had wanted to was to derail Sam's anger train. Once that was done, he figured he could distract the puppy. That thing was far too smart and way too in tune with Sammy for its own good.

He dropped the large bag of diner takeout on the table with a grocery bag from the local store. He scooped up the puppy and firmly did not look at his father. It took two hands now, and its snarl tapered off into a curious noise as it dangled in front of Dean's face. "You, little dude, need to relax. That's our dad you're snarling at." The puppy sighed.

He set the little guy down and took out a tray of ground beef. Part of if went onto a Styrofoam plate with a plop, which he set in front of the puppy on the floor. The rest went into a cheap-ass cooler for later.

"You feed it raw meat." John sounded like he couldn't quite believe these idiots were related to him.

"Yeah, well. I wouldn't want to eat dog food either. That stuff smells nasty." Dean expertly pretended to be oblivious, as he divvied up the fast food he had brought back for himself and his brother. John got half of Sam's fries and one of Dean's two burgers. Beggars can't be choosers, or something like that.

"You're giving it a taste for flesh."

"Well, it is a carnivore. Besides, he won't eat kibble." Dean sat at the table and pointed a fry at his father. "But you will be happy to know that he hasn't tried to gnaw off any of our tender fingers or toes yet."

John ate a fry and looked like he was trying to be reasonable. "And when instinct gets the better of it and it wants to attack something?"

Sam grinned around his burger. "He mauls Dean's clean socks." There was a beat of silence. "But not mine."


End file.
